Notes of discord

On the podium: conductor Alex Briger created his own opportunities by putting together the great big scratch ensemble the Australian World Orchestra, two years ago.

Katarina Kroslakova

legendary Israeli conductor Zubin Mehta doesn’t get a lot of free time. The 76-year-old’s duties as music director of the Israel Philharmonic leave him just a week a year for side projects.

Which makes it all the more remarkable that he has chosen to spend his only available free dates of 2013 in Australia, conducting the Australian World Orchestra (AWO), the great big scratch ensemble Alex Briger put together two years ago.

Even without Mehta, the World Orchestra was already a coup for the 43-year-old Australian, who conducted Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony during its inaugural 2011 season from the same podium on which his uncle, the late Sir Charles Mackerras, conducted the Sydney Symphony Orchestra to open the Sydney Opera House in 1973.

The AWO performance, culminating appropriately in Beethoven’s Ode To Joy, was the exultant homecoming Briger had hoped for. But he had to make his own luck to achieve it, drawing on his extraordinary network to create an orchestra of Australian all-stars who hold top musical posts locally and overseas.

This is why Zubin Mehta’s 2013 star turn underlines an essential irony. To take the AWO to the next level, Briger has had to cede the podium to the sort of international brand name he knows is required to fill seats; the sort of brand name – in the making at least – that continues to beat the local competition to the choice jobs in this country.

Just look at the chief conductors appointed this year for state orchestras, not one of whom was Australian. The incoming West Australian Symphony Orchestra chief Asher Fisch is from Israel; Sir Andrew Davis (incoming Melbourne Symphony Orchestra chief) is British; and David Robertson (incoming Sydney Symphony chief) is American.

Is it a case of clashing schedules (surely Simone Young was at least asked), or do our locals simply not cut it? Or were solid Australian conductors, who do get plum jobs overseas, overlooked for the prestigious posts due to the cultural cringe that never seems to leave our shores? After all, the last Australian in a chief role was Stuart Challender (Sydney Symphony 1987-91). Before that, Sir Charles Mackerras (also SSO, 1982-85). Simone Young was chief conductor of Opera Australia from 2001 to 2003.

It’s not as if we have stopped minting contenders: more than 200 Australian conductors have undergone intensive training in this country over the past 15 years. Yet not a single one is currently leading a state symphony orchestra.

Briger is hardly alone in thinking it’s time for an Australian orchestra to take a punt and engage a young conductor in a lead role. “Give them a chance,” he pleads. “The SSO took a huge risk on Challender, a fairly young conductor who didn’t have a huge amount of experience. But it paid off big time.

“Just like it paid off with [British conductor] Simon Rattle, [music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic] Gustavo Dudamel, even [the late American composer and conductor] Leonard Bernstein was basically a kid when he started.”

Richard Tognetti was just 25 when he took over as artistic director of the Australian Chamber Orchestra.

Therein lies another irony. In the 2013 season, a dozen or so Australian conductors are scheduled to work with the state orchestras across various projects. But the more they establish themselves overseas – through necessity – the less their calendars open up for longed-for return trips to Australia. This includes last-minute calls when booked overseas big names fall ill.

Briger himself is an accomplished Australian conductor who chooses to base himself in Sydney with his family, but is forced to spend most of his year on the road for work. In 2013, he is busy in Europe and the US, but his podium appearances at home are currently non-existent – despite years of training and hundreds of concerts overseas.

So his creation of the AWO is a prime example of young conductors making their own luck so they can work in Australia. Talented musicians are creating their own ensembles or turning semi-professional orchestras into artistic and commercial successes.

Admittedly, not every Australian conductor has the contacts, time, or business acumen to create a new orchestra, although it’s not as glamorous as it sounds: Briger operates the now multimillion-dollar budgeted project with his sister “from her dining room table”, working long hours.

Most Australian conductors participate in the development program of Symphony Australia. Chief executive Kate Lidbetter says their success has far exceeded original expectations. “When we started in 1997, our goal was to place one Australian conductor on the world podium within 10 years,” she says. “We now have dozens.”

The organisation spends at least $1 million a year on artist development, with $350,000 towards conductor training. “I am ever optimistic that an Australian could become chief conductor of an [Australian state] orchestra,” Lidbetter says. “Otherwise we wouldn’t be running the program. But I don’t think we’re there yet.”

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra currently features the most – eight – Australian conductors for 2013.

It is the only state orchestra with an associate conductor, a role created for Melburnian Ben Northey, 41, who has done the seemingly impossible – carved out a successful full-time conducting career while living in Australia with his wife and young daughter. After intense training at the Sibelius Academy in Finland, Northey returned home.

“It was really a life choice,” he says. “We were missing our friends and family. I believed it was possible to have a career in Australia. As it turned out, it was.”

Northey’s versatility appealed to local orchestra administrators. “I started with the serious repertoire. When it turned out I was able to do the more commercial stuff as well, I was very useful to them … I embraced the progressiveness of the orchestras.”

In 2007, Northey led the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra in a world-first collaboration with hip-hop outfit Hilltop Hoods to create The Hard Road Restrung, an orchestral take on the Hoods’ platinum-selling album. The unlikely collaboration reached gold status and won an ARIA award.

“Those are things to be proud of,” Northey says. “It wasn’t because I had nothing else to do.”

Earlier this year, he was a last-minute replacement when Scottish conductor Donald Runnicles fell ill before an MSO Master Series concert. The Age reviewer Clive O’Connell called the concert “flawless”, “memorable”, and added “everything went right”.

It is these breaks that Australian conductors long for. Northey’s three-year contract with the MSO ends in 2013. Is he being considered long term? “Nothing is ever impossible,” says Lou Oppenheim, director of operations. “Musicians can be the strongest critics. But the reactions towards Ben are incredibly positive.”

To artist manager Patrick Togher, a “gentle policy of affirmative action” would go a long way. “Consideration of future chief conductors should be nationality-neutral – except when the candidate is Australian,” Togher says.

“Most Australian music lovers look forward to the day when another Aussie is at the head of one of our orchestras. I feel it would be in the interest of all classical music organisations to take advantage of this and ramp up their marketing of local stars.”

New Zealander Barbara George, chief executive of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, disagrees. “We are supportive of the best people for the jobs,” she says.

“We don’t believe that any of our Australian conductors are inferior. We are not doing them any favours. We require them to do their best.”

Northey sees the debate from a commercially realistic side, too. “Orchestras need Australian-based conductors they can book with confidence,” he says. “They can’t sustain a business model that imports prohibitively expensive conductors.”

Education is where it all starts, and the best training institutions are overseas. Only Sydney and Melbourne Universities offer masters degrees in conducting, but none can offer podium time with professional orchestras.

Lidbetter concedes conducting is a hard profession to break into without a regular titled position.

“Audiences don’t want to see the same faces week after week, so it means a lot of coming and going,” she says.

“Any conductor who wanted to make a career in Australia would have a hard time doing that. Ben Northey is very rare. He set out to do it, and I take my hat off to him.

“But you can’t just set up shop in one city – it doesn’t work like that. So amongst the conductors, there is frustration, but there is also acceptance.”

The Australian Financial Review

BY Katarina Kroslakova

Katarina Kroslakova is the editor of Life & Leisure
weekly
and also Luxury magazine. She writes on fashion, travel and the
arts.